Only You
by Vestibulocochlear
Summary: Waking up here only ever makes him want to sleep again. Shounen ai. ZxCl.


"Will you marry me?"

"_What?_"

"Ha! I knew you were listening."

"Huh? Wha—That's not funny!"

"I dunno, I'm laughing pretty hard."

"Cut it out… I'm trying to read, here," a voice from his left proclaimed, followed shortly by the blunt prod of a bare toe jabbing at him between the ribs. "And you're the _only_ one who thinks you're funny, you know."

"But I'm serious," he laughed, opening eyes previously closed against the shining sun. Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Zack cast his gaze around, searching out the blond at his side. The world had a green-blue haze to it as his eyes tried to adjust to the bright light and color, and it reminded him of something, unnerving him… But he only pushed the thought away in favor of grinning to match Cloud's glare in intensity.

"…No, you're not," the younger man spat back, though he sounded a lot less than convinced of this. There was no remaining part in him that thought Zack a rational human being; there was no way he could ever be certain of the conviction with which the brunet would kid. Or not kid.

"Sure am." He rolled over and pulled his knees up, crawling through the short-cut grass to flop down next to Cloud. Slipping an arm around the blond's shoulders, he tipped his head to the side and wrinkled his nose as spiked strands threatened to make him sneeze. Cloud definitely wouldn't appreciate being spat upon. No matter how unintentionally. "We'll get married, quit the Shin-Ra, and pool what little funds we have to go buy a shack out in the country someplace. Live happily ever after—"

"Zack, that's stupid…"

"—_if_ you ever learn how to cook."

"You're the only person who thinks _that_ sounds like the good life," he said with an amused sort of snort, shaking his head. And Zack had to turn his own off to the side and clap a hand over his mouth as he felt the air leave him in a rush, the force of the sneeze bringing the threat of tears to his eyes.

"Not sick are you?" Cloud asked warily, lifting his attentive blue gaze to study Zack mistrustfully.

"Please! You never give me any credit," he sighed in feigned offense, looking off into the grassy distance wistfully. Everything still looked the same, as if he'd put on a pair of green-tinted glasses, but Zack found it easy to ignore in favor of other interesting things. He had been lying on the ground for a while, after all, with his eyes closed. When a little more time passed, he was sure it'd go away. "I'm not sick, your head's just tickly."

Swatting a playful hand away from his hair, the blond mumbled a minimally irritated, "Well if you'd keep your nose away from it, we wouldn't have that problem," and went back to the newspaper still clutched in both of his hands.

"Hey, check it out," he piped up, changing the direction of the conversation to some new, tease-worthy subject. Zack lifted the hand not attached to the arm hooked securely around Cloud and pointed out the tagline above a large article on the next page. "Your boyfriend's still making headlines."

"Shut-up," his companion responded flatly, adding a smart "And _you're_ still not," for the sake of wounding pride. Not that Zack wasn't already an overflowing wealth of ego. He'd survive a good dose of verbal abuse just fine.

"Harsh!" he declared gleefully, leaning against Cloud again to read the bluish lines of text. "…But that _is_ what you were lookin' for, right?"

Cloud said nothing, only giving him a very slight nod in answer. He wasn't exactly proud that Zack had found his casual hero worship of the General so amusing, and both of them knew it. The older boy still teased him on this subject, like every other one, but at least not to the point of extensity.

"Waitasecond, this doesn't make any sense."

The proclamation dragged Zack out of his mind's drift, where he'd fallen, finding the tiny words too hard to process under the hazy, green-hued sun.

"So what is it, huh?"

"It's this picture. I mean, really look at it."

"I'm looking," he leaned forward with a pleasantly befuddled smile on his lips, right up until—

Zack woke with a start, sitting bolt upright, then jerking and twisting to his right in pain when he felt a jolt of agony race up his side. The wound burned, sinking vicious little claws into his flesh, and he clapped a hand to the spot immediately, though the action did no good. It only took a second for him to remember where he was and whom he was, losing that hazy, after-sleep disorientation and finding a gradually growing hopelessness to replace it.

Three years he'd been here, and two birthdays (_Happy twentieth, _his mind cheered on laconically). He certainly should've recognized the grungy little cell quicker by now. It was no more than a hole in the wall, a round-roofed, too small, dirt-walled hole in the wall. And the whole place stank like the basement it really was, cold and dank, but he had gotten used to that. Anybody could get used to that. Anybody given time, and boy, did he have a lot.

Most days here, it was the screaming that bothered him. He could take the pain, he could take the torture, he could waste away here without a care for himself at all, but it was that _noise _that'd drive him crazy. If he ever got the luxury. Sometimes it was Cloud's voice, and more often than not his own. Other times he couldn't even recognize the screamer, when they brought in the ones who stopped so shortly after they'd come as to've made the sounds of their dying only a passing entertainment. He hated to think what happened to them, what treatments they were given. Or those who were taken away almost too quickly to be noticed, and put somewhere, probably for safekeeping inside some deep, dark little hole in the earth. All shut up and secure, just like Zack, in his silent little cell. Just like Cloud, right down the hall and so close and so agonizingly far away at the very same time.

Finally managing to pull his hand away from the grimy wound in his side—a lot of bruising and a few lacerations, Zack recalled—he used it to wipe absently at his nose, knowing full well that it was only going to smudge up his face ever further. But the goddamn thing still itched, as if he'd really felt something there, as if his dream had leached over into reality, grasping little tendrils tearing into the true world. (Like all that green in his dream, he can see it down the hall now, same as ever, the big glowing green and—_Gods, even in my sleep I'm an idiot._) He thought he'd heard somewhere, sometime, in the ancient, ancient past, that believing in your dreams was one of the first steps to insanity.

And after all the contemplation, he still surprised himself by welcoming the thought of the quiet, listless death of his own mind with open arms. Because he could hear the screaming again, it was coming from down the hall. The incessant howling, and somewhere, garbled between the swears and murderous curses, his own name, in that pleading, aching voice. He wouldn't ever forget the sound, as it came back to him in the sleepless nights, all throughout the rest of his short, short life.

And it was all so goddamn_ unfair. _Not to him—he didn't care about himself, he never had—but to Cloud. To Cloud, who had never done a thing to hurt anyone, not in his mind, who had never asked to be treated like this, who had only ever had the best of intentions.

And Zack swore to himself, swore it on all of those jagged tally marks in the wall, on the two dirty fingernails he'd torn off clawing at it, the two years they'd already lost, on the burning wound in his side—the pain of resisting an insurmountable force—he swore he'd get them both out. Out of this hell on earth, this endless, torturous nightmare. No matter what the cost, Zack would see Cloud safe before he ever let himself die. No matter what.


End file.
